


See No Evil, Hear No Evil

by Saint_Dionysus



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ableism, Canon Disabled Character, Closeted Character, Disability, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Period Typical Bigotry, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:02:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24867289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saint_Dionysus/pseuds/Saint_Dionysus
Summary: The Gaang finds out about the draw-backs of Zuko's scar. It takes Aang a little longer than the others.
Relationships: Aang/Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 18
Kudos: 712





	See No Evil, Hear No Evil

**Author's Note:**

> Zukkang will be featured heavily in the next two chapters.

Katara knew it right away when he walked off of that boat, she remembers thinking;  good, he deserved it.

  


She’s regretted that thought for a long time now. She still didn’t know how he got it, but she knew he didn’t deserve. The skin was melted together around the eye leaving it in a permanent squint — the eye still moved around, but she had enough medical knowledge to know, it didn’t see much — if anything at all.

  


Sometimes, when she watches the boys train — and she has to remind herself that’s what they are, boys, because for long she saw Zuko as a man. A man dead-set on seeing her dead, on seeing her brother done away with, on stealing away the only hope left in the world and her only friend outside of her family — she lets her eyes linger on his body and his scars for too long.

  


There were a lot of them, most not as obvious as the one across his face. Some were small cuts from sort of blade — no doubt from all the fighting he did chasing them around, others were tiny burns that were littered across his body. 

  


She knew that most firebenders had them. Firebenders and Earthbenders were alike in the regard that their element hurt them inevitably. When you’re throwing around the weight of the earth or chains of fire, you were going to get hurt. Toph had scars on her forearms, her knees, her feet, her hands. Katara wonders if they talk about it. About wielding elements that can do so much harm to you if you make one wrong move. 

  


Water and Air were a danger of course, but you had to work to make them dangerous. Blood-bending wasn’t possible except for one night of every month and it took straight to whip water hard enough to cut. Fire in itself, was unwieldy — she heard Zuko tell Aang once,  ‘The fire is just as alive as you and I. If you want to wield it, you must be confident or it will not deem you worthy and it will not listen,’.

  


Water couldn’t burn half your face off, it couldn’t steal your vision or your flesh.

  


— — — — 

  


Sokka realized it during the battle on Kyoshi Island. He prided himself in being a good warrior and for some reason it turned out that in a dress and under the command of a woman, that he could prove himself to be one as well.

  


He might have been fairly new to battle — to actual battle, not the sparing he had done as a child with the men of his village — but he had seen veterans of battles his whole life. Tribal elders with legs that didn’t work quite right, with hands that always shook, eyes that didn’t work, and most often — hearing that had faded. The sound of war is a loud thing, the yelling, the clashing of metal on metal, the the blasts of bombs and fire. 

  


Of course, disability rarely got you out of battle when you’re tribe was being raided. He had seen the older men fight with as much gusto as the younger. He had watched the way they struck their weapons broader to compensate, the way that they kept turning in battle to make sure they could see everything, hear everything, because fighting without all your senses required constant vigilance. 

  


That’s how the fire prince fought. He blasted his fire in every direction — perhaps because he didn’t care what he hit, but no — he swung his fits to wide from the left and he kept the right side of his face towards his enemy. He danced around in circles and he never let his guard down. 

  


Oddly enough, sitting on-top of Appa watching the princling scream in the distance as they made their escape. He didn’t bring up the weakness. Maybe it had to do something with honor. You don’t stab your enemy in the back — or in this case, his left. 

  


— — — — 

  


Toph didn’t know about the scar at first. She knew that their newest member walked a little odd and that he was clumsy. He wasn’t heavy but he walked like he was, as if he felt unstable. She didn’t thing to much about it, he hardly seemed like a stable person — not that she would hold it against him. For all her strength she wasn’t very stable either. She walked heavy too.

  


It wasn’t until The Ember Island Players showing of The Boy in The Iceberg that she found out about the scar. Apparently it was on the wrong side. 

  


“Which side is it on,”

  


“… The left,” he had croaked, “it’s on the left. From the bridge of my nose to just behind my ear. In the shape of hand — more-or-less,”. 

  


“How did it happen?” 

  


“I don’t want to talk about it,”. 

  


“That’s fine, I don’t want to talk about a lot of things. I think we’re alike in that way,”. 

  


  


After they defeated the Firelord, Zuko held onto her like he was afraid he would collapse if he let go. She figured it must be an odd sight that they made. A nearly full-grown man — who is she was remembering right, was by his Nation’s standard a full-grown man — clinging to a 12 year-old blind girl like his life depended on it. 

  


He hadn’t stopped shaking since the healers discharged him. They said they had done all they could for his body, but that his mind would need a little more time and a lot of love. Toph didn’t know a lot about love. She knew that a kind old man had talked her ear off once and that it was the first time she had felt something warm in her heart that didn’t come from the thrill of a battle.

  


“I can’t see,” she said. 

  


“I know,” he replied, because he did. Zuko was simple like that.

  


“I never could. I was born blind. I don’t know what anything really looks like. Sometimes Aang or the others will describe things to me. They’ll tell me that the fruit I’m eating is round and red. I don’t know what red looks like. I know it’s a color and it’s the color of your nation, but I don’t understand it. Red. I know what round feels like. When I run my hands around a ball of clay, it’s smooth and round and I can’t conceptualize what it looks like,” She continued, “It’s odd, to think that I’m missing a whole sense. I don’t feel like I am, it’s all I’ve ever known. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to see. I keep telling myself that it’s probably over-rated,”.

  


“I don’t know any other blind people. Sometimes I wish I did, in fact, a lot of the time I wish I did. I don’t know where I would find other people like me. If I did, would they feel the same? Would they have been born without vision or would they have had it taken away by battle or old age? What it they told me that it wasn’t overrated. That I’m missing out,”. 

  


“You’re missing out,” He replied. Zuko was simple like that. 

  


She liked that about him.

  


“I lost the vision in my left eye,” he sighed, “I can still see from the right eye, not as well as I used to — they the smoke damned it. Nothing is as clear as it used to be. I miss being able to see individual leaves and knowing just how far away from something I really am. I miss the way I used to be. I feel unbalanced all the time. Like I’m going to tip over at any moment. I miss the little details in paintings, the ability to read without holding the paper at just the right angle,”. 

  


“Don’t you think it’s a little cruel to rattle on about all the things you miss being able to see, to a blind girl whose never seen anything at all,” She asked. 

  


“No, not really. It’s like you said. You’ve never known anything else. You didn’t loose anything,”.

  


“And you did,” she finished for him. 

  


“I can never tell if I’m being rude or not,”.

  


“Being polite is overrated, you’re not missing out on much,”. 


End file.
